'Serenity'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
I haven't seen Titanic. Or Charlie, or Brokeback Mountain, or Lord of the Rings. Because they didn't interest me.
Well, and also because they weren't playing at $1 movie night while I was in college, since that overcame disinterest on a number of occasions.
I didn't see Titanic because I was never that interested in the Titanic and I never rented it because I was working at Blockbuster when it came out (it should be a Human Rights violation to have My Heart Will Go On play as many times as it did). I had preteen girls squee!ing over the fact they got a cheap plastic replica necklace for pre-ordering. At least the squees drowned out Celine's wailing.
I've been watching Titanic a lot lately (when there's nothing else on the TV, HBO is almost guaranteed to be playing it on one of its many channels), and what I'm noticing (other than the great art direction) is how good actresses both Kathy Bates and Kate Winslet are, considering how much they both bring to their very underwritten roles.
Compare and contrast Dicaprio's really shallow take on his Jack (was this movie the beginning of the overabundance of Jacks in film and TV?)--he could have done so much with Jack's supposed worldly wisdom, acquired as a starving artist in Paris, but instead all we get is him bleating "Rose!" and "I'm the king of the world!" all while dodging bullets from the evil Billy Zane and David Warner.
I liked Victor Garber. And the band that went down with the ship.
I hated the movie, but I loved Victor Garber.
I started to write a long defense of not seeing the movie based on what I know about it and what I know about movies that I hate, but, y'know, it's easier to just call me a snob. I'd prefer "aesthete," but they may be the same thing.
And people are bidding for it.
End times...end times.
I think "snob" implies that you judge other people for seeing (and/or enjoying) Titanic.
I hated the movie, but I loved Victor Garber.
I am Plei. Only good moment of the movie was VG staring at the painting of the ship as she was going down.
The SFX were good, but I'm a character/plot person for movies and astounding effects will never make up for bad character/plot.
I saw Titanic on TV, and thank heavens, because I could watch something else for the entire first half (it was split up over two nights) and then tune in for the disaster-porn.
Which, I mean, I have seen a lot of disaster-porn. I know there are better reasons to show what is happening at the water line than "they handcuffed my hero to a sinking boat!" Where is the Fred Astaire-level guest star? Where the random O J Simpson sighting? The subplots were not nearly ludicrous enough, and not enough famous people got to die, and anyway a death any less OTT than flames and/or a 100-story drop (thank you Richard Chamberlain) hardly counts toward the entertaining body count.
Really, a historical disaster movie is stuck either way. If it's meant to be Reverently Historical, then it can't get away with idiotic invented love stories. (Like Titanic wasn't interesting enough without teh sex??) But if it's not meant to be Reverently Historical, then there's no reason not to go OTT and have Loni Anderson on board, and have her hair act as a flotation device.